Violent Jihad is the heart of Islam; without it, Islam would,
most likely, have died a natural death in the seventh century
itself. --M. A. Khan (p. 79, Islamic Jihad).

M. A. Khan —
the able editor of the
increasingly popular islam-watch.org Website, which disseminates the
factual understanding of Islam and its ongoing malaise—has
also proved his ability as a scholarly author in his maiden venture
by writing a persuasive book, Islamic Jihad. This is a very
important addition to the growing list of literature for the
accurate and objective understanding of Islam and Jihadi violence.
In this book, Khan has made it crystal-clear that Islam is
imperialistic and violent at its heart, and that the current
Islamist terrorism is a continuation of Islamic Jihad that ensued at
the birth of Islam. The message of this book is that Islamic Jihad
is very much alive and kicking and the current civilisation may
ignore the threat only at its peril.

This seminal work of Khan is in the league of Andrew Bostom’s
bestseller, The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of
Non Muslims.

Islamic Jihad is divided into seven main chapters: beginning with
the elaboration of such topics as the controversies that currently
surrounds the idea of Jihad, basic beliefs in Islam, Prophet
Muhammad’s biography and the birth of jihad, and ends with the topic
of Islamic slavery. At 380 pages, it is a massive work. Khan
deserves a huge acclaim for completing such an influential work.

Khan has written on various aspects of Islamic jihad: violence of
Prophet Muhammad, Islam’s treatment of the Jews, Christians, Hindus,
Buddhists, Sikhs and people of other religions, the imposition of
Islamic imperialism and Arab suzerainty in various parts of the
world. In this review, I shall briefly highlight some of the salient
features of Khan’s work.

On the cultural genocide of the conquered people, Khan writes:

But the Islamic conquerors acted on destroying the culture of
the conquered infidels because of the fundamental Muslim belief
that the vestiges of the pre-Islamic jahiliyah age must be
replaced by the perfect religious, political and cultural
civilization of Islam. (p. 164)

This is a profound statement, which tells us why the converts of
Islam hate their original culture, language, traditions, and
civilisation. Islam completely destroys the link of the
conquered-and-converted with their past. This explains why a Muslim
from India or elsewhere considers himself Muslim first, then
anything else. This book makes it clear why a recent convert becomes
eager even to sacrifice his life for Islam and readily volunteers to
wear explosives-laden suicide-belts for killing, en masse,
his innocent coreligionists of recent past. He completely
disconnects himself from his root, his ancestry, his past religion,
and perhaps his indigenous language and culture. Khan’s book is a
compelling reading for Muslims, who have lost their past.

The author chronicles Islamic incursions in various parts of the
world, which started soon after the death of Prophet Muhammad.
Sourced from impeccable historical evidences, mostly documented by
Muslim historians, Khan has depicted a compelling picture of Islamic
invasions of India, the Balkans, Spain, the Middle East, Africa, and
Europe, plus its spread in South East Asia. The narration of these
incursions is detailed and engrossing; much new information up to
the current time have been included. Thus, this is not simply a book
of chronicle of Islamic history, but up to date. To scholars and
academics, this book will be a valuable reference for the history of
Islamic jihad. Muslim readers will find this book a masterpiece to
understand their root, and know why they are Muslims or why not. The
researchers and writers on Islamic jihad will find this book an
invaluable one stop reference.

Khan compares the Islamic colonisation of the infidel world of
India, South East Asia and other parts of the world with those of
the European (Western) colonisation. He wonders why the indigenous
people of these regions, who were largely forced to convert to
Islam, have selective memories: while they glorify the Islamic
imperialism, most often cruelly imposed on their ancestors, yet
condemn the Western colonisation as slavery, decadent, and
oppressive. He provides ample proof that the Western colonialists,
unlike Islamic ones, resorted to much less slavery, committed less
violence and left indigenous cultures and tradition often
unperturbed. Khan asserts that the converts to Islam of invaded
lands have got it totally wrong when they maintain that Islam
brought them liberation. The truth is: Islam brought horrible
slavery, servitude, forced conversion, obliteration of indigenous
tradition and culture, dhimmitude, religious persecution, and
genocide to their ancestors. Western colonialists resorted to these
practices on fewer occasions.

Khan eloquently describes how the Muslim invaders systematically
advanced in India through war, terror, plunder and forced
conversion. Islamic invaders diligently killed all the fighting
Hindus, looted their temples and shrines, and enslaved the women and
children. Many of these enslaved Hindu children were raised as
Muslim fighters for engaging in killing their Hindu ancestors.
Muslim soldiers methodically raped the child bearing Hindu women,
generally captured as war-booty. These hapless Hindu women had no
choice but to submit to Islam, and give birth to Muslim children.
This profoundly affected the religious demographic in India (the
same elsewhere) as Khan writes:

Therefore, wherever Muslims made successful inroads, they
reduced the Hindu population directly by slaughtering the men in
large numbers and taking away the women and children as captives.
It indirectly reduced the Hindu populace by rendering the remnant
Hindu men unprocreative by depriving them of childbearing female
partners. Since those women became the vehicle for breeding Muslim
offspring instead, the final result was a reduction of the Hindu
populace and a sharp rise in the number of Muslims. The growing
Muslim population was to be maintained by the toiling of the
vanquished Hindus, subjected to grinding taxes. This is roughly
the same protocol, which Prophet Muhammad had applied to the Jews
of Banu Qurayza and Khaybar. (p. 102)

According to Khan, this had been a deliberate strategy by Muslim
invaders to permanently change the demography of India, in their
attempt to convert the entire India into a Muslim subcontinent. This
attempt was a huge success given that India is now flanked by two
Islamic nations: Pakistan and Bangladesh, born out of Hindu India.
(It has been much more successful elsewhere). This book presents
this truth with forceful conviction. Those, still doubtful of the
roots of the Pakistani and Bangladeshi people, must read Khan’s book
to dispel the doubt. Honestly, Khan’s book forced me to search for
my own Hindu roots and heritage. Other Muslims from that part of the
world may also happen to do the same, once they read this book.

Khan also lists thirteen humiliating conditions, enshrined in the
Pact of Umar, that were to be ideally imposed by Muslim rulers upon
their dhimmis subject: Jews, Christians and others (some rulers were
lax in imposing them). This list is a must read for all non Muslims
and eye opener for those, who think that Islam is tolerant and
merciful towards non Muslims. On the Pact of Umar, Khan writes:

The terms in the Pact of Omar for dealing with dhimmis are
clearly in agreement with the sanction of Allah [Quran 9:29] and
prophetic tradition. Therefore, the Pact of Omar, wrote Abu Yusuf,
the great eighth-century Hanafi jurist, ‘stands till the ay of
resurrection.’ (p. 106)

Therefore, in a pure Islamic society, non Muslims must not expect
any protection of their human rights, which, historically, was most
often the case and continues to be so, such as in Saudi Arabia.

Khan also shatters the popular myth that Islam in India was
largely spread peacefully by the Sufis. With undeniable historical
evidences, he has demonstrated that many of those so called Sufis
were anything but peaceful mystics. Khan provides the names of many
famous Sufis, who were actually Jihadis resorting to war, plunder,
and forced conversion.

Another surprise that Khan’s book springs is the myth that Islam
came to South East Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, Southern Thailand and
Southern Philippines) through peaceful traders. Based on authentic
sources, Khan convincingly proves that propagation of Islam in South
East Asia was not as peaceful as it is usually thought to be. It was
mainly jihad by stealth, coercion, intrigue and deceit, and in many
instances bloodshed. On the propagation of Islam in Indonesia, Khan
writes:

Ibn Battutah’s description shows that as soon as Muslims gained
political power as in Samudra, they started brutal Jihad against
the surrounding infidels. (p. 140)

The author also provides the reason why Islam had spread so
quickly in South East Asia after Muslims gained political power. It
was, according to Khan, probably because of the Shafii Law practiced
there, which gives idolaters only two choices: conversion to Islam
or death. Whereas in India, the milder Hanafi Law showed some mercy
to the idolaters by elevating them to the status of tolerable
dhimmi, thus sparing the lives of Hindus, who did not voluntarily
convert to Islam. As a result, the Islamization of India was less
successful.

Khan’s book provides an ominous picture of a world dominated by
diehard Islamic jihadis as the global Muslim population increases
fast and the Christian populations in previously Christian-majority
Lebanon, Bethlehem, Sarajevo, and Nigeria etc., dwindles rapidly.
Simultaneously, they vanish from Palestine, Egypt, Iraq and other
Muslim-dominated countries, resulting of persecutions. It is a
serious global threat, indeed.

Islamic Jihad cites many examples of racism inherent in Islam and
as practiced by the Arabs, since Muhammad’s time. Even to this day
in Arab countries, even Muslims of dark complexion—from Bangladesh,
Pakistan, India and Africa—are treated as less than human and with
utter contempt, gross discrimination, lowly status, and poor pay.
Khan’s compelling examples flies in the face of the popular claim,
even by leading non-Muslim scholars of Islam, that Islam is
egalitarian and preaches universal brotherhood. One must read Khan’s
book to affirm how groundless those claims are.

The most fascinating and illustrative chapters of this book are
Islamic Imperialism in India (Ch. VI) and Islamic Slavery (Ch. VII).
Readers will find these two chapters absolutely absorbing. Here is
an excerpt from chapter VI:

The scale of the destruction of Hindu, Buddhist, Jain and Sikh
religious institutions by Muslims in India have few parallels in
the history of conquests. In most instances, after a temple was
destroyed, the idols and treasures therein were carried away,
while the remains of the destroyed temple were often used as
materials for the construction of a mosque at its place. The
Kwat-ul-Islam (Might of Islam) mosque in Delhi was constructed
from the materials of seventeen destroyed temples of the area.xxx
The priests of the temples and monasteries were normally
slaughtered, as joyfully narrated by Amir Khasrau and Sultan Firoz
Tughlaq amongst others (mentioned already). (p. 199)

The Chapter on slavery would reveal a harrowing tale of
inhumanity suffered by tens of millions of innocent people from
India to Central Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and even the
United States.

In conclusion, Khan’s work is very scholarly, persuasive and
cogent. The language is simple, easy to understand, and engaging.
Once started reading, readers would feel an urge to finish the book.
No serious readers of Islam should ignore this book. Read this book
and you will grasp why the Islamic Jihadis are doing what they are
doing. Readers of the subcontinent (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh),
especially Muslims, will be shocked at the suffering their ancestors
suffered at the hands of Muslim invaders from the Middle East and
Central Asia. The compelling account of many invasions and
subsequent incursions will force them to eagerly search their roots.
Readers from elsewhere in the Muslims world, and even Europe and
America, would also be able make a connection as to how Islam
impacted lives of their ancestors.

This book is also a must read for today’s political leaders—both
Muslim and non-Muslim—to shake off their apathy towards the mortal
danger of ascendant Islamic radicalism. The final word about the
Islamic jihad can be summed up by Dr Ali Issa Othman, a reputed
Palestinian sociologist and advisor to UNRAWA on Education, who said
on the propagation of Islam that,

‘‘The spread of Islam was military. There is a tendency
(amongst Muslims) to apologize for this and we should not. It is
one of the injunctions of the Quran that you must fight for
spreading of Islam.” (p. 146)

Perhaps, the only flaws of this book are the absence of an index
and a glossary.